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As soon as they heard the Ranger was recruiting for new crew members, Anne and her daemon went to the docks to present themselves in front of Captain Vane and his yellow-eyed lioness. She has her hat off, standing straighter than she normally would, and Dain is looking his most feral, his most mean. A fox is not a sea-faring daemon, but this is all they want – to go to sea on this ship. To get away from London.
The Captain's reaction to her is to laugh, and after that he barely spares her a glance. As for the other man in the cabin, he pushes his lean body off the wall and comes forward, drops into a chair next to the Captain and studies her with uncommonly dark eyes, as if right the way through.
“Name?” He says.
“Bonny. Anne Bonny.”
When he smiles, it's not mocking, and she wonders what he's finding funny. But Dain doesn't care to compete with his daemon, a sleek, velvety black rat poking her nose out of an embroidered sleeve. Anne thinks he might be underestimating her due to her size. Her eyes can't even track the speed with which she runs up the Quartermaster's arm, and jumps fluidly onto the opposite shoulder, her bald tail whipping against his neck.
He does most of the talking, between the three of them, she picks up his knowledge of the North, and all the time he is seeing through her skin, to the inside. She believes she sees him pretty well too – he's just as ruthless as his superior, despite his more amicable approach, and he prides himself on being at least a step ahead of his Captain, at any given time.
Just before she closes the door on the meeting, she hears him ask, “Would it've killed you to have feigned an interest in her, Charles?” and knows he's going to ensure their place on board.
At that time, she didn't guess it was inevitable, for there to be something between them. But it was.
It could have been any number of days since they landed on Nova Zembla, as the sun does not rise here for weeks on end. The men are growing restless, and Anne no less. Now Vane has disappeared, without bothering to tell anyone where, or why – although perhaps there's one person privy to this information. She knows who she has to go to, to provide some answers.
She weaves her way through the bar of the Samirsky hotel with Dain at her heels, looking for his tall and skinny figure in the crowd, but he isn't among them. Finally she catches sight of him sitting at a table with an unimpressed eye on his brothers, the little rat nibbling on his extended index finger. Anne stops short at his bored, seen-it-all-before expression, debating whether or not to do this now after all. Dain nudges her leg. Then the other daemon sees her, and she must say something, because Jack's eyes find her too. He gives her a slight smile, and that settles it. She crosses over and draws out the opposite chair, pours herself a drink from his pitcher.
“Where's the Captain, then?”
He raises an eyebrow, she thinks as if to say, is it him you're really interested in, still he doesn't come out with it – and she isn't sure herself, yet.
“Departed to Svalbard on his own business.” He replies, gesturing to the raucous crew. “Every so often he gives me the honour of being in charge of this fine body of men. And you too now, of course.” His tone becomes softer at that, not quite as biting.
“You don't count me as one of them.”
“We mean it in a complimentary fashion, Anne.” The daemon replies, sounding aggravated that Jack could have allowed this misunderstanding.
Anne stiffens, and stares. Dain almost never speaks even to her, let alone in the presence of others.
Jack takes a moment to gauge her reaction. “You find her to be objectionable?” He asks lightly.
“No.” She says, silently admiring her soft-looking dark fur, the bright, highly intelligent black eyes.
“Some people do.” He strokes her slowly, possibly emboldened to show contact with her after Anne's said that. “Some people find us both objectionable, don't they, Fari.”
“So that's her name.” She has wondered now, for a while, what it was.
“It's Farandi.” He says quickly, realising his slip, recovering just as fast. “And his?”
“This is Dahanain.”
Dain waits for the smaller creature to come to him, a little bit on edge, but he lets her sniff him. He responds to the greeting with more curiosity than Anne's really ever seen of him. Their daemons touch for the first time and Anne feels the stirrings of actual passion inside her that isn't anger, so welcome yet so fucking frightening.
That night she hunches on one side of her bed, stroking Dain's notched ears with her thumb. She doesn't sleep. Instead she sits looking outside at the permanent twilight through the windows rimmed with ice. There is no way to tell the time from the sky here. Everything's very still. It's as if the world has stopped and will forever remain like this, but she doesn't mind because it's beautiful.
Eventually, Dain raises his head from her lap. “You're going to go to him, you know.” He says, in his voice like dry, rustling leaves. “Ain't no point making me wait.”
The naphtha lamp is almost burned out in Jack's room, only throwing light off the empty bottles cluttered on the bedside table, and onto his pistol which is within reach, but he's lying asleep with his bare feet hanging off the mattress, Fari cupped against his stomach. He doesn't stir until she's standing right above him and Fari squeals an aborted warning far too late if she'd been someone who intended him any harm.
“Fuck, Anne, what are you doing?” His voice is heavy with the veneer of sleep and lacking some of its cut-glass precision as he struggles up.
“Were you cold?” He asks. She can't see his eyes, in the dark, just the shine of them, but she knows if she could they'd be showing how much he fucking cares. “You want to get in with us?”
Dain takes the invitation first, diving under the covers before Anne can even nod. She sits on the edge and hugs him around the shoulders, and then runs her nose up his throat, speaks into his ear. “Not just that. I wanna fuck you.”
He draws in an audible, shaky breath, fingers plucking at the hem of her night shirt. “Well in that case, I'm at your disposal, darling.”
She slides her hand up his neck into his ruffled hair and tugs, not hard, but firmly enough so he will appreciate what he said actually means, with her. And he knows better than to protest. She finds his mouth pliant, accepting her aggressive kiss. His head tips back and back until she catches it. He's the one angling himself up, beginning to sweat in the press of their bodies. Breathing hard as she climbs over him so her shins bracket his hips, pinning him with her weight, such as it is.
Anne draws the blanket back to discover his lower half naked anyway. His cock is interested just from what's happened so far. Normally she wouldn't wait, wouldn't look so intently at a man she was about to fuck, but Jack...he has the most angular bones, the smoothest skin. She wants to see him properly, not with the curtains drawn to create the illusion of true darkness in the room. In the meantime, she maps his fragility with her fingers, how his stomach dips instead of curves. He shivers, doesn't ask her to hurry up but the need can be read in every taut line of his body.
In the end he breaks free, rolling on top of her and she lets him have it his way, for the most part, withholding her moans until he pounds the last stabs of orgasm out of her. He finishes slumped above her with his head bowed, lingering there as it lasts and pecking her cheek before he flops back. Something scurries across her vision and she realises it's Farandi, hurrying to confer something to him.
“Will you stay?” He relays, softly.
When she doesn't answer, yet makes no move to go, he sighs heavily. “You won't hurt our feelings if you don't. We've been there, Anne, believe me.”
His words carry the weight of at least ten more years experience. She could leave. Dain would follow, even though he wants the opposite. She resigns herself to the fact they'd have to come back, that it wasn't just the loneliness of the North that brought her and Jack together. It would have still happened, in any case, in any other place.
She nods, “We'll stay,” and his arms come around her. They are not strong ones, yet she feels completely secure in them, all the same.
She wakes up in his bed, with his name on her lips, relieved to find he's not there to hear it, although the warmth she rolls into informs her he has only just left. Too comfortable to move from there, she lies in his recently vacated space, with Dain curled around her feet, not knowing if she's ever felt so content.
In a few minutes he enters dressed in his clothes from yesterday, trying to be quiet, until he sees she is watching him. Fari ventures out of his pocket and clambers onto his belt. She never seems to really be off of him for long.
“Woke up and there wasn't any grog left.” He says, by way of explanation, and offers her a shot from the bar downstairs. “Don't know how we let that happen.”
She sits up, pushing her hair out of her face, and drinks it straight away. Jack rests himself on the edge of the bed. Observing him closely, she recognises her own pose from last night, before Dain made their decision for her.
“What's wrong?” She asks lowly, shuffling closer to him, with the quilt still wrapped around her.
“I don't know what to do,” He swallows the shot from his thimble, places it down beside hers and grimaces as if he has something difficult to admit. “When he leaves like this. Say if another Captain came and tried to take the crew...” He pauses, rubbing his forehead. "I couldn't stop them.”
She wasn't planning on it, but she brushed her thumb over his lips very gently, realising this is the strain she'd sensed in him yesterday, at the table.
“I know what to do with you.” She says, and strips him naked again.
On the floor, Dain plays with Farandi, trapping her under his claws, letting her escape only to catch her once more, a game which reflects the one on the bed in its display of wanton dominance. She has Jack anchored with an arm barred across his collarbones, her eyes searching his face while her fingers twist inside of him.
“I think you can take another.” She says, and he flinches slightly, although only at her bluntness.
He lifts the hand holding him, bringing it up and drawing her fingers into his mouth. His eyes are half-lidded as he licks them, squeezing closed occasionally as Anne pushes in past the muscle. He seems to love being reduced to just having to feel, and not think, until there isn't a thread of tension left in his limbs. She wonders if he's done this to himself sometimes, but the way he takes it so hungrily, and adjusts so readily to further intrusion, that isn't even a question. She laughs and he pulls his head back, indignantly.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. You should just fuckin' see yourself.”
His mouth tightens and she feels she's been a bit too cruel, bends down to kiss it open again.
After breaking away, leaving him gasping, she asks, “Well? Do you care if you lose the crew now? Do you care what Vane will do to you?”
“Not at the moment,” He groans, “No.”
In later years, Anne will still remember their first days together at the Samirsky and its punishing liquor, its rough sheets, the inhospitable room where Jack was laid bare. They rarely leave it, but she comes with him whatever business he attends to, learning from him indirectly how to make a living out here. They make three sets of tracks in the snow outside, hers, Dain's and his; Fari always clings onto his body somewhere. The rest of the crew become as living ghosts; no one knows when Vane will return. They are all stuck here waiting, but only Jack is real to her. In the meantime, he entertains her with stories of the things he's seen - cliff ghasts, armoured bears and witches - that she'll see soon too. Sometimes he tries to lift the lid on her reticence.
“Where do you come from?” His hands are clasped around hers, his pupils are encircled by the thinnest rim of brown.
“London.” She says. “Where you met me.”
“And before that?”
“It ain't a good story, Jack.”
His head inclines just enough to make it seem like he's pleading with her to share this information with him.
“Won't you let me be the judge of that?”
She shakes her head, pulls her hand away to accept something Fari has brought her, a pretty earring she found trapped between the floorboards, lost there by a former occupant.
“Not now. Come on. I thought you were gonna tell me about the Aurora.”
She wears Fari's present in her hair in the evening, watching Jack play cards from the bar. Every so often he looks up and catches her eye, his own so lustful when money's on the table. It accumulates swiftly in front of him, until he loses it all to an Arctic explorer in one fell swoop. As he's laughing it off with every intention of winning it back, the group is joined by a big Muscovite with a Laika daemon and the mood becomes tense all of a sudden. Some of the other men fold and excuse themselves as politely as possible. Jack doesn't, but he looks noticeably uncomfortable, his eyes dart around as though he's been cornered and his throat flexes before announcing his hand.
It doesn't take long for what she knows is coming; the Muscovite throws his cards down and grabs Jack, who has no doubt said something sharp and inexcusable, to a man such as that.
Anne holds herself back with difficulty. She has to try and respect him in this. To trust he knows what he's doing.
The man has dragged him up by the chain around his neck, and then Fari appears from his shirt, running up to his shoulder to defend him, revealing her strong teeth. Anne lip-reads the Muscovite calling her vermin in English and can't stand still anymore.
She goes over and stands right in his field of vision, Dain leaping onto the table by Jack's other side, flanking him.
“Out fucking side.” She growls at the man daring to put his hands on Jack. “Now.”
The Muscovite eyes the handles of her blades, smiles, and drops Jack back on his seat. She gives him a look, that communicates Stay down, keep playing. I'll handle this.
The confrontation takes place by an old structure for housing firewood, fox and dog snarling at each other, ready to rip each other apart.
“Listen to me. Whatever score you've got to settle with my partner, you don't go about it like that.”
The man's laughter rumbles in his chest. He's drunk, she suddenly realises. And an overconfident fool. Maybe not even a match for Jack, like this.
“Why do you protect him? Association with Rackham does not benefit anyone. He'll betray you soon enough. Better for you that I go back and bust his pretty head open –”
“No, see, that's where you're wrong.” The threat decides his fate, before he's even seen her draw her knife she's driven it into him so deep he's on his knees, choking red on the snow.
She thought Jack would stay inside like she told him to, safe in the warm, and she would go back and tell him it's dealt with. But damn him, she hears him call her name, and turns around to see him coming, clutching his coat to him in the frozen cold. The Muscovite's daemon bursts into a shower of golden sparks just as he walks out of the light spilling from the door.
“Fucking hell.” He says, waspish annoyance in his voice also hiding some greater concern. “He was Magesterium, Anne. I take it you know what that means for us?”
“Gotta run.” She answers. “Stay ahead of other agents. Join a new crew. There are other ships, after all.”
“Darling, while I don't dispute the fact your reasoning is sound, you can't begin to imagine how hard I had to work to join this one.”
“You're better than that. You could have your own, Jack. Don't tell me you planned to stay Vane's Quartermaster forever. ”
He raises his eyebrows, mollified by her faith in him, and shakes his head. He's at his best in situations like this, yet Anne isn't bad.
He bends down and pries the Church's signet ring off the Muscovite's finger, holds it out for Fari to inspect, then throws it up and catches it clenched in his hand with a diabolical smile. Anne has no idea what use he might put it to, but it strikes her as just being something, in this moment, that he cannot resist taking.
When she kisses him, his back against the wall of the wood shack, it's like she can taste the cold metallic tang of boundless ambition in his mouth.